Eliza Jane Pearce was born in Polk County on 23 October 1842. It is
likely that Benjamin Cloud and Eliza Jane's families knew each other while
living in this area. She married Benjamin on 18 December 1856. Their first
four known children were born in Tennessee. They moved to Henderson County,
Illinois sometime around 1867. The last four known children were born in
Illinois. This was shortly after the end of the Civil War and the move could
have been related to this event in history. Ann Haupt remembers her mother,
Laverne (Cloud) McCoy, telling her a story once about one of her grandfathers
hiding out in the woods near home, because he didn't want to go back to the
war. Whether the story was true or even a Cloud, there were many varied reasons
to get farther away from the area of the war.